Rev. Augustus R. Green

Rev. Augustus R. Green was a pastor, abolitionist, and the founder of the AME Church’s official newspaper, The Christian Herald. He is known in Windsor as an advocate for fugitive slaves and the editor of the True Royalist and Weekly Intelligencer, a weekly newspaper aimed at educating and informing the African-Canadian population in Canada West.

Green was born in Virginia to free black parents in 1815. He grew up in Pennsylvania and, as a young man, joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in 1841. Green

became a pastor shortly thereafter and founded the AME church’s official mouthpiece, The Christian Herald (later The Christian Recorder), in 1848. The Christian Herald published articles on church matters and issues pertaining to the African-American community. It remains the oldest existing African-American periodical in the United States.

In the 1850s, Green became a vocal anti-slavery activist and encouraged African Americans to immigrate to Canada in order to escape their harsh slave owners. Green himself moved to Canada West (Ontario), settling in Windsor in 1860. He became a member of the British Methodist Episcopal (BME) Church and shortly thereafter founded the True Royalist and Weekly Intelligencer. The True Royalist joined the likes of other prominent black newspapers in the Windsor area that supported an abolitionist agenda, including Henry Bibb’s The Voice of the Fugitive, and Mary Ann Shadd’s The Provincial Freeman. Although the True Royalist had a short run of only 10 issues, it was helpful in informing free blacks about anti-slavery, temperance, politics, and ways to succeed in their new home of Canada West.

Green briefly served as pastor at Windsor’s BME Church, located at 363 McDougall Street. In 1862, he broke away from the BME Church and became a bishop of its offshoot, the Independent Methodist Episcopal Church. When the American Civil War ended in 1865, Green moved back to the United States, settling in Washington, D.C. and rejoining the AME Church. He served as a clergyman until his death in Mississippi in 1878.

Sources:

“A Brief History of The Christian Recorder.“ The Christian Recorder, Sept 2016.

Hembree, Michael F. “Christian Recorder.” Encyclopedia.com (originally in the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History), updated Sept 20, 2020.

McKivigan, John R., ed. “James Monroe Whitfield to Frederick Douglass,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series Three: Correspondence, Volume II: 1853-1865 (Yale University Press, 2018), 51, note 9.

“True Royalist and Weekly Intelligencer (Windsor).” INK – ODW Newspaper Collection, n.d.